4 - Transformation of the Gandhian Movement in Contemporary India

        This paper explores the reasons why the power of the Gandhian movement in India has been becoming weaker but has still sustained a certain tenaciousness. A Gandhian is a grassroots social activist who lives a simple and ascetic community life in the Gandhian ashram and who works for the realization of the ideals of M. K. Gandhi. Vinoba Bhave and Jayaprakash Narayan are some prominent figures that were Gandhians. Both were direct disciples of Gandhi and can therefore be called first-generation Gandhians. Second-generation Gandhians are disciples of the first-generation Gandhians and include Narayan Desai and Sunderlal Bahuguna. The previous literature about Gandhians stressed that the Gandhian movement in India has been in decline because there was a schism among the Gandhians, and the nationwide Gandhian organizations have been weakening since the 1970s.
        However, this paper argues that a better perspective is to regard this change as a transformation of the Gandhian organizations from a centralized-type to a network-type. The true decline of the Gandhian movement came after their network started to shrink in the 1990s. Based on a fieldwork survey done in Uttarakhand, India, this paper argues that although there is still much potential for the movement to gain popularity among different communities in Indian society, particularly for their activities such as promoting basic education and sustainable agriculture, the present Gandhian movement is losing its power because the main figures in the movement are only upper-caste Hindus.